


a song you once knew well

by Odaigahara



Series: Soulmate September 2020 Plus [5]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Attempted Murder, Childhood Friends, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders is a Good Friend, Hostage Situations, M/M, Morality | Patton Sanders is a Sweetheart, Reality Bending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26692417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odaigahara/pseuds/Odaigahara
Summary: Day 13: Power Loss*Interlace had caught the bank teller’s eye as soon as she came in; he’d gone slack and unresisting, and was already complying with her demands. Their phones had fritzed out at a snap of one of the henchmen’s fingers, but a low murmur of fear had remained past the shouts for silence. This was a hostage situation, and Interlace held the keys to their metaphorical shackles.Interlace,whose attempts to kill Eden and Chronologic had morphed into deadlier and deadlier stunts, monstrous undiscriminating violence that had put the shapeshifting Eden out of commission for months. Who had blown up an entire high school when her demands went unanswered, and who could skewer a person’s mind and twist it up, turn them against their own families.Roman had never been so afraid. He locked hands with Patton, his best friend of sixteen years pressing close at his back, and prayed that they stayed unnoticed.
Relationships: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders/Morality | Patton Sanders
Series: Soulmate September 2020 Plus [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932382
Comments: 14
Kudos: 74





	a song you once knew well

**Author's Note:**

> TW's at end notes.
> 
> Thanks to alicat54c and Parallelmonsoon for beta-ing!

“Roman?” Patton quavered, and Roman pushed him farther back, shielding him with his broader shoulders and trying to hide his own trembling. Everybody was on the ground, cowering as the villain’s henchmen paced the rows with automatic weapons. 

Interlace had caught the bank teller’s eye as soon as she came in; he’d gone slack and unresisting, and was already complying with her demands. Their phones had fritzed out at a snap of one of the henchmen’s fingers, but a low murmur of fear had remained past the shouts for silence. This was a hostage situation, and Interlace held the keys to their metaphorical shackles. 

_ Interlace _ , whose attempts to kill Eden and Chronologic had morphed into deadlier and deadlier stunts, monstrous undiscriminating violence that had put the shapeshifting Eden out of commission for months. Who had blown up an entire high school when her demands went unanswered, and who could skewer a person’s mind and twist it up, turn them against their own families.

Roman had never been so afraid. He locked hands with Patton, his best friend of sixteen years pressing close at his back, and prayed that they stayed unnoticed.

Neither Patton nor Roman had powers, because neither of them had a soulmate. Like sixty percent of the population, they had no ability whatsoever to defend themselves against the violation of mind control or a blast of fire or- or  _ anything,  _ not really. It had never particularly mattered before- Roman had been sad, sure, because who didn’t want an epic romance, but there had always been Patton, and days spent at each others’ houses, and schoolwork and theatre and movie nights where Patton always burned the popcorn, and it had faded in importance. Patton didn’t care that he didn’t have a soulmate, not when he had Roman, and Roman had thought it best to return the favor.

Now, though, he desperately wished that he did. Perhaps then he could play the hero, get them out of here, keep Patton safe. Perhaps then he might not have to watch him die.

“Roman, she’s looking at us,” Patton whispered, clutching his hand in a death grip, and sure enough Interlace was already striding in their direction, sharp heels clicking against the linoleum.

She stopped in front of them, cocking her head like a predatory bird, and purred, “What a cute couple.” Roman felt Patton open his mouth to correct her and elbowed him. Not the time, Padre. “What were you doing here today? Creating a joint account?”

“Opening a checking account, actually,” Roman said, and his voice came out smooth and clean, nearly jocular, training taking hold where nerves failed. “Though I’m afraid we didn’t get to the front counter before you made your appearance, Miss Interlace.”

Her eyes widened, and she laughed. “You’re a real Prince Charming! Just think, if you’d been a minute slower you might’ve been locked out instead of in. Isn’t that funny?”

“Rather vexing, really,” Roman said, and Patton’s grip grew even tighter. “I was hoping to go to Subway after this.”

“Just you?” Interlace asked, gaze moving to Patton.

Patton blurted, “Ma’am, he doesn’t mean to be rude!”

The other hostages were silent around them, some sending pitying or horrified looks, clearly expecting an outburst of violence. Roman tensed, staring up at the villain before them, but Interlace only huffed another laugh. “Oh, don’t worry, kid. I’ve heard much worse.” Her eyes sharpened, hazel glinting deep orange, and she said, “But you, Charming. Let’s take a look at you.”

Roman couldn’t tear his eyes away. He stiffened, muscles trembling to move, and Patton made a distressed sound against his back. Distressed, just like-

_ Running home from school with tears in his eyes, another failed test in his backpack and a parent-teacher meeting on the horizon, before Roman caught up and tackled him by accident, not expecting the change in speed. _

_ Sleeping in Roman’s backyard in a lopsided tent, whispering into the early morning about boys and fairy tales and the book Roman was totally writing right then, panicking when a moth got into the tent and flew into Roman’s eye. _

_ Applying to all the same colleges and throwing out any acceptance that they hadn’t both received, because Patton was the other half of him, the Nutella to his banana, the arpeggio to his scale, needed wanted making him  _ better-

Roman gasped and collapsed back into himself, pressing a hand to his aching chest, and Interlace said, grinning, “Oh, wow, you’ll do better than I thought. Eden’s a sentimental idiot, however much he likes to pretend. You two are gonna to break his heart.”

Roman’s heart turned to ice. “Miss, please, Patton isn’t part of this- wouldn’t it be more heart-wrenching if one of us died and the other was, was forced to watch? He cries so easily, you’ve never seen someone so horrified by violence, I’m sure he’ll affect Eden very badly-”

“Roman, _no_ , don’t you dare,” Patton snapped, refusing to let go of his hand, to step back, and Interlace snickered and caught his eyes. 

Patton went perfectly still. Roman couldn’t breathe.

“No commentary from the peanut gallery, if you don’t mind!” Interlace turned to her henchmen and said, “A, B, go ahead and make your getaway. C, you’re with me,” and two of the minions disappeared in a cloud of gas, taking the money with them. The third stepped forward with a nod, pale eyes holding a hint of a smirk. 

“Ugh, can you believe Eden and Chronologic haven’t even arrived to save these other poor citizens? Guess my little diversion did more damage than I thought.” Her grin was a slash across her face. “Works for me, though.”

The world distorted around them, making Roman stumble into Patton, and suddenly the wind was hitting their faces, cold and thin, and the skyline loomed close around them. Roman yelped and tugged Patton away from the edge, staring in horror at the thin railing of the skyscraper’s roof, thousands of feet in the air. 

Patton blinked at the sharp movement, eyes clearing, then choked, “Oh _goodness_ ,” and pressed close to Roman’s side, skin going white as paper. “Roman? Are you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t think to look away.”

“I’m fine, Rat-A-Pat,” Roman choked, “but I’m afraid- well, you see-”

“So touching!” Interlace exclaimed, regarding them like pets who’d done an unexpected trick. “Damn, you two are great. C, aren’t they great?” The teleporter nodded. “Amazing. Worse than Sarah McLachlan singing about dead puppies. I’m in awe.”

“Th-thank you?” Patton babbled. “Um, if we’re so great, maybe you could not kill us, or only kill me. Since Roman’s charming and everything and didn’t accidentally imply things about your age.”

“Patton, don’t _say_ _that!”_ Roman shrilled, and Interlace snickered.

“No worries, Rat-A-Pat,” she said, twisting the nickname until it soured. “I’m killing both of you! You can die first, though, if you’re so eager. Get away from the grief.”

“But,” Patton said, tears beading at the corners of his eyes, “but I, we haven’t even seen Hamilton yet-”

“Please,” Roman forced out, and the height they were at gave him vertigo, made his head swim and his eyes tear up; it could just as easily have been grief. His only consolation was that if Patton died, Roman would have to follow after him. 

Even if Eden and Chronologic arrived then, too late to save the star of his solar system, the sun in his sky, his best friend who once gifted him pasta because he loved making food for his friends that damn much- he’d jump off the side. He’d step in front of a bus, eat a bullet,  _ anything _ , because as soon as Interlace took Patton there’d be nothing  _ left- _

Not yet. Please, please not yet, please let the heroes get there first. “Can’t we say goodbye?”

“Hm, not interested in letting you stall your way out of this,” Interlace said, rolling her eyes, “and look, there’s already a news helicopter. I’ll bet your faces are on TV. Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame!”

“I’ve had hours of fame,” Roman snapped, “I’ve done community theatre, I was on Vine, I do fucking YouTube covers-” Patton giggled at that, a teary little sniffle, and Roman’s voice broke. “Please. Just a moment.”

“Fine,” Interlace sighed, and Roman was really starting to hate the casual sound of her voice, the way she stretched her words like taffy in her teeth. Her enunciation was spot-on, though, he had to admit. In another life, when he wasn’t thinking about acting to avoid thinking of Patton’s impending death, he might have admired it. “On one condition! Two, really. First, I get another looksie through your fascinating mind, and second, ha, you’ll like this one- you get to kill him yourself!”

Roman went cold. “What?”

“You heard me!” Interlace said, and suddenly Roman couldn’t find anything to admire about her enunciation at all. “Or I can kill him more slowly, how about that? If you don’t kill him, I’ll get C over here to splice him up so he keeps losing limbs from teleporting wrong and dies in agony! Does that make your choice any easier? Now it’s a mercy kill.”

Roman choked, tears finally spilling over, and then Patton was in front of him, kissing his cheeks, hands cradling his face. “It’s okay,” he said, trying to smile, but Roman could see that he was shaking. He saw everything about Patton, always. “I’d rather die because you killed me than from what she just said. Dunno if you think my opinion’s tele-important here, but that’s my two cents, okay, kiddo? I promise I won’t be mad.”

“You being mad at me is not the problem I have with this, Padre,” Roman said weakly, pulling Patton into a hug and breathing in, letting the familiar smell calm him just a little. “I  _ can’t- _ I swear I’ll follow you, if we end up anywhere after this I won’t leave your side for a second-”

“You already don’t,” Patton said, face crumbling around his smile, and Interlace cleared her throat. Roman saw sheer hatred flash through Patton’s expression, something Roman hadn’t seen since he’d been yelled at by a teacher in middle school for drawing in class, and Patton said, steadier, smiling, “I don’t care that I never had a soulmate. I know you did, but you were always more than enough for me. I don’t regret anything, okay?”

“Neither do I,” Roman croaked, and when Interlace’s henchman yanked him away, forced him to meet Interlace’s glowing gaze, he managed not to struggle.

Her power reached into him again, rooting through his memories like a pig through mud, and he saw  _ the lights onstage, Patton giggling at a pun, his desk lamp illuminating a blank useless page, Patton sniffling after a bad scrape, the first day of first grade, Patton showing off striped pink socks- _

More memories than he knew he had, than he’d ever cared to name, his life laid bare to a sadist on a roof who liked him for his lovely fucking manners.

The psychic grip pulled away, sending one last memory flickering through Roman’s head, and something in it caught his attention. 

It was the day before his and Patton’s first meeting. The last day he’d spent as a team of one (and a half, since Remus  _ did _ count, and god, what if he was watching this right now, what would he think when he learned they were dead?), before Patton came into his life.

_ Roman was sitting in the sandbox, humming snatches of random tunes and dreaming up ways to rescue his soulmate, who in this fantasy inexplicably lost their powers while Roman kept his. He was engrossed, dancing a little green soldier across a field of pebbles he was pretending were bombs, and then he let the soldier go and it moved on its own for a moment, holding up its gun like a sword- _

And the Roman in the memory thought, clear as bells, _ I’m gonna meet my soulmate tomorrow. _

And the next day, despite a total lack of rain for the past week, Patton’s favorite playground had been flooded. So his father had taken him to another one instead, loosing his shy sensitive preschooler onto Roman and Remus’s favored battleground, and they had gone to confront the intruder, confusing him with their identical faces and bombastic personalities-

And Patton had burst into tears, distressing Roman and making Remus laugh, and he’d dropped his sword and said,  _ wait no we’re heroes, you can be the one we save, _ and grabbed Patton’s arm-

Roman fell back into himself, stumbling to his knees, and Interlace said, almost reverent, “You two are beautiful, you know that?”

“So glad you think so,” Roman forced out, and got to his feet. His face was wet, eyelashes gummy with tears. He could see Patton in the corner of his eye, shaking and trusting, watching him anxiously.

“You know what you have to do now,” Interlace said cheerfully, and pushed Roman toward Patton. “Make your goodbyes fast and heartfelt, okay, we’re on a time limit. The 24-hour news cycle isn’t gonna wait all day.”

Roman repressed the urge to tell her to go fuck herself, preferably with something unpleasant, and made his way back toward Patton, clasping him to his chest. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice breaking. “I’m sorry, we’re almost certainly going to die, and I- I have to- will you trust me?”

“Of course,” Patton blurted. “Of course I trust you, always, I  _ love _ you, I’m.” He sniffled, eyes red with crying. “I’m so sorry you have to do this.”

Roman had to close his eyes against a well of grief. “All right,” he whispered, and the news helicopter circled above them, too slow and far away to do any good. Patton was a warm weight in his arms. “All right. If I’m wrong, I suppose it won’t matter, but if I’m right, I- try to focus. If there’s anything that can slow you down, anything you can think of-"

“I don’t think it’ll matter,” Patton said, horribly gentle, and brushed a finger under Roman’s eye. He was shaking. “But I’ll try, if you want me to. Are you-” and of course he was on the same track, understood just what Roman meant- “gonna push me? Or should I try to jump?”

“I’ll push you,” Roman said, even as everything in him rebelled against it. “You’ll have to let go of me, Patty-Cake.”

Patton nodded, disentangling himself, and stepped back to the edge, closing his eyes. Roman choked back a sob, swallowing every instinct, and shoved him over the side.

If Patton screamed, Roman didn’t hear it. His ears were ringing as he stared at the empty space, as Interlace laughed behind him, and something in him counted the feet,  _ twenty fifty one hundred _ covered in a few split seconds, his best friend already too far to save-

And a sense he’d been neglecting since he was in pull-ups returned, crystal clear. 

Powers took practice. Roman had heard of placebo drugs that stifled abilities children never knew they had, of people who made assumptions about their soulmate status and never bothered to check whether their abilities still worked, even of subtle abilities rearing up in times of great danger- but their powers always took time and effort to return in full.

This wasn’t  _ anything _ like that.  _ This _ , the sense he hadn’t known he was missing, was easy as breathing now that he knew it was there. 

Interlace said, “Good show!” and raised her gun, barrel set between his eyes, and Roman didn’t bother to flinch.

The world was full of colors, more than any human could ever have named, and each of them  _ meant _ something. Probabilities, matter and energy, shifting directions he hadn’t been aware existed. The minuscule differences between lead and gold were laid bare and obvious before him, hardly an obstacle at all.

Roman had heard of abilities so powerful they could warp the fabric of reality, make the whole world their canvas. He’d never stopped to wonder what it was like.

It felt fitting, somehow. Warm and creative, like putting on a costume for a show.

He exhaled, and the gun collapsed into butterflies, Interlace and Henchman C collapsing with it.

They were still breathing, if only because Patton wouldn’t want them to die. Roman could see through their skin, into the individual cells that made up their organs, a riot of color and infinitesimal sound.

He reached out desperately for the colors that meant  _ Patton _ , hoping beyond hope that he hadn’t been too late, that Patton wasn’t dead, and found them on-

On the  _ ground- _

Suddenly Roman was on the ground, too, startled spectators gasping at his inexplicable appearance, and a warm weight crashed into him from behind.

The extra colors vanished as if they’d never been, and Roman whirled around and yanked Patton to his chest, horror and hot relief blocking up his lungs. “Oh,  _ God _ , I thought you were dead, I thought-”

“I thought  _ you _ were!” Patton wailed, definitely making a scene, but Roman couldn’t begin to care. “I fell and I did what you said and I can make  _ wings _ , Roman, big shiny ones out of my back, did you know I could do that?”

“No,” Roman gasped, “I hoped I could catch you. I suppose my estimate of how long you’d be falling went awry.”

“Well I guess that’s what you get for winging it,” Patton said, and Roman choked on a laugh, couldn’t make himself let go. “Gosh, that was- that was stressful, I- are they still up there?”

“Whatever I did will have stopped working by now,” Roman said, and Patton nodded, wiping away the tears on his face.

“Okay. Okay, um. What do you say we go across town for ice cream and pretend we weren’t just on the news for as long as it takes before someone recognizes us? We can get two scoops each, and sprinkles, and fancy chocolate-dipped cones, and I won’t remind you how you’re lactose-intolerant even once.”

“I think I may need three scoops to forget pushing you off a roof,” Roman said wetly.

Patton drew back and squeezed his hands. “As long as you never do it again,” he said, “because that was actually really scary and I screamed the whole time.” He grinned, shaky. “So I guess that means I scream for ice cream-”

_ “Patton.” _

“-and also that we’re soulmates,” he finished, shyer. “Which... I don’t remember us ever figuring out.”

“It’s not as if we don’t act like soulmates anyway,” Roman said, “what with the living together, and going to the same college, and the couples costumes-”

“I liked being peanut butter and jelly,” Patton sniffled, and his eyes widened. “But, um, I think that’s a reporter...?”

“Not for long,” Roman said, then amended, “By which I don’t mean that they’ll stop being a reporter, just that they won’t be on our _tail_ for long- excuse me, coming through!”

They fled.

Later the press might swarm their houses, having matched their faces to names. Later, they might be approached by heroes or an agency, demanding to know exactly what had gone down, what Roman had done to cut Interlace’s strings so effortlessly- but that was a problem for future them. 

_ Present _ Roman and Patton were slipping through the crowd, keeping their heads down and heading for an ice cream parlor, plotting out the most outlandish treats the cashier could give them. 

They were soulmates, and they were alive. After some discussion, they agreed the rest could wait.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: hostage situation, attempted murder, being forced to kill someone (failed), hostile telepathy, heights, mentions of suicide


End file.
